In each effort of creation, discovery or innovation may it be scientific or non scientific, there is always a history or story behind. Creation of digital Bangladesh is not different from that culture. Before going to discuss on background and justification of creation of digital Bangladesh, the history of innovation of automatic switching system in telecommunications world may be discussed as a bright example.
Strowger switching system was the first automatic switching system developed by Almon B. Stroger in 1889. From now on it is 120 years or 12 decades ago . There is an interesting story behind this particular innovation. Strowger was an undertaker whose business seemed to have suffered on account of a telephone operator in a manual exchange. When the subscriber rang up the operator and asked for an undertaker, she always connected them to her own husband who was also an undertaker and a competitor to Schrowger. He got annoyed at the amount of business he was losing this way. Then he decided to make a switching system that would replace the human operator. Finally he succeeded and the switch developed by him was named after him. The automatic switching systems have a number of advantages over the manual exchanges. Some of them are here;
(a) In a manual exchange, the subscriber needs to communicate with the operator and a common language becomes an important factor. In multilingual areas this aspect may pose problems. On the other hand, the operation of an automatic exchange is language independent.
(b) A greater degree of privacy is obtained in automatic exchanges as no operator is normally involved in setting up and monitoring a call.
(c) Establishment and release of calls are faster in automatic exchanges.
In teaching students of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at Peoples University Bangladesh, I had to tell the interesting story of innovation of switching system before going to discuss technological aspects of the chapter. There are lots to learn from this story. The problems were social and technological. The operator was creating social problems and technological problems were there because of lack of advanced technology. Scientists and technologists believe there is always a solution for any problem.
After 120 years, we are facing unlimited problems of similar types almost every moment. The problems are social and technological but they are not difficult for us to solve. In many cases, the solutions are very interesting and it takes very short time. Some problems have magic like solutions. Just one sentence is enough to solve many problems. But they seem very difficult problems to many of us. Technology is also a kind of magic tool. We are cheated by the dishonest technologists because of lack of our technology knowledge in that particular field or matter. Now we are being cheated so much that it has reached to the highest point as was the case of Strowger. Being too much annoyed he innovated the automatic switching systems. Our position in the country is not very different from his case. We need to find solutions or to find the man who can solve the problems using his magic words or magic activities. The concept of “digital countries” did not come in a day or two. It has a long history of sufferings and cheatings. Digital Bangladesh will surely bring positive impact in the society.
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